How to Make Beef Jerky in the Oven

Oven-drying is probably the most readily accessible method for making beef jerky at home. I wouldn’t say that it’s the easiest method – a dehydrator wins here – but everyone has an oven in their kitchen. I’ve been experimenting with making beef jerky in my electric oven and I am happy to say that I have finally achieved the results with which I am quite happy.

When making beef jerky in the kitchen oven, you need to pay attention to these four important things:

Meat selection

Food safety

Temperature

Air ventilation and circulation

Selecting meat for beef jerky

There is no best meat for jerky. Any lean meat can be used to make it. I read somewhere that meat for jerky needs to be 93% lean or higher. This is because beef fat does not dry well and becomes rancid quickly. That said, nowadays we make beef jerky not for it’s long shelf life without refrigeration but for its taste. In my house, a batch of jerky doesn’t last long enough for fat to become rancid.

Fatty jerky, without a doubt, tastes awesome. It’s also easier to chew. I tried it once from Big John’s Beef Jerky – my favorite artisan beef jerky maker – and got hooked for good. However, making fatty jerky in the oven may be problematic as kitchen ovens’ lowest temperature settings aren’t low enough not to melt fat and make your jerky greasy.

Commonly used beef cuts for making jerky:

Eye of round

Flank steak

Top round

Bottom round

Sirloin tip

Chuck

Skirt steak

It makes financial sense to go with the cheapest cut you can find.

Beef jerky and food safety

There are several methods that are commonly used to ensure that beef jerky is safe to eat. USDA recommends to “steam or roast meat to 160 °F before dehydrating it“. The reason for doing that is to destroy any potential pathogenic bacteria (e.g. E.coli and Listeria) present in the meat. One way to achieve that is to place meat in an oven at 275F for 10 minutes.

Drying temperature

Traditionally, beef jerky is dried at around 145F. In the kitchen oven, you will have to settle with the lowest setting available. Most kitchen ovens don’t go lower than 170F or so. This will result in a slightly different texture of the jerky as compared to other production methods.

To make oven-dried beef jerky safe to eat, it will be initially heated to 160F in an oven at 275F. This process will take 10 minutes.

Air ventilation and circulation

As common sense would suggest, drying beef jerky means removing moisture from the meat. Hence, it’s important to ensure that your oven has an efficient way of removing moisture throughout the drying process. Oven vents are not sufficient for that. You will need to crack open the oven’s door and keep it like that while you are drying jerky. A wooden spoon will come in handy for keeping the door ajar.

If your oven has a convection fan, it may be a good idea to use it as it will greatly expedite drying time. With the door open, you will need to find a way to the keep the button down for convection to work. Also, if the air flow is too strong, you may want to place something between the fan and the jerky to disperse the air stream from the fan.

Instructions

A lot of beef cuts come with a fat cap. Trim the fat off and cut the meat into manageable pieces that will be easy to slice. Then put the meat in a plastic bag and put in a freezer for a few hours. Freezing will firm it up and make it a easy to slice evenly.

When the meat is firm, slice it about 3/16" - 1/4" thick. Thinner sliced meat tends to come out dryer and less chewy. Thicker will take a long time to dry.

To make the jerky chewy, slice it along the grain.

To make the jerky less chewy, slice it across the grain.

Combine all the ingredients for the marinade in a large Ziploc bag and shake.

Add the meat slices, shake and massage the meat really well.

Refrigerate for 24 to 48 hours, flipping the bag and massaging the meat every 6-8 hours. Strictly speaking, marination is not necessary, but it makes jerky much more flavorful inside out and tenderizes tougher beef cuts.

Remove one rack from the oven so you can start hanging the meat slices on it. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 300F.

Hang the meat on the oven rack. The most efficient way is to hang the meat slices vertically, as shown on the picture below. This way you can have about 5 lbs of meat on one rack, properly spaced out.

Once the oven is preheated to 300F, bring the meat in, close the oven door, turn the temperature down to 275F and bake the meat for 10 minutes. This will bring its internal temperature to the safe level of 160F.

Drop the temperature further to the lowest setting your oven can go, e.g. 170F. Crack open the oven door and insert a thick wooden spoon to secure it in that position.

After about 30 minutes, when the temperature in the oven has stabilized at its lowest setting, turn on the convection fan, if you oven has it. It will expedite the drying process. You will have to find a creative way to keep the button down to activate convection.

Continue drying jerky until it's ready. The jerky is dry enough when it bends without breaking, while surface develops cracks when you bend it. This will take anywhere from 4 to 8 hours, depending on whether you use convection and the thickness of meat slices.

Notes

For safety considerations I always use Cure #1, but I made it optional in the marinade recipe. You decide for yourself. Not only does it make jerky safer to eat, but it also improves its color and enhances the flavor.

Oven beef jerky – the results

I did a direct comparison of oven-dried beef jerky to the famous Jack Links. The texture was quite similar. Jack Links jerky was a little more bendy and did not crack when bent. It also was softer and more moist due to a variety of additives that it uses. Oven-dried jerky wins in my book. It tastes more traditional and natural. I also preferred the flavor of the oven-dried jerky.

I buy pink salt from the sausagemaker.com, but there are many other places too, or Amazon here. Many grocery stores carry either pink salt (ask at the meat counter), or Morton Tender Quick (pretty much the same thing, just make sure to follow directions on the package for the ratio per pound of meat). Morton Tender Quick is usually in the same place where they have table salt and such. I know Wegmans carries it, if you have it near where you live.

Victor, I’m looking forward to making some jerky per your instructions. I too have a convection oven. I discovered that it is possible to crack the door and have the fan run too. Being a woodworker, l took a small wooden block,(1/2″ thick x 1 1/2″ square),and put it over the little pop out button that tells the oven the door is open. Close the door on that block and it thinks the door is closed, allowing the fan to run, and venting some of the heat. I have not made jerky yet,but it should work. May have to experiment with block thickness to get desired temp. Hope this helps. Happy cooking, Keith

I’ll be attempting my first batch of beef jerky tomorrow (it’s marinating now) and I really appreciate this and the work you put into it. Prior to your information, I’d never heard of Cure#1 so I’ll see if I can find some. Also, do you think using the convection settings on an oven would be beneficial? I would guess that would at least keep from having to prop the door open. Thanks.

I saw drying vastly improved when I added a fan, so, technically, convection will be very beneficial. The problem that I had with convection is inability to keep the target temperature. My oven’s lowest temp setting is 170F. I wanted to stay true to the original drying process which suggests about 145F – 155F. So, with the oven door closed and 170F lowest temp setting my temps ended up being well over that. Not being able to have convection fan working with the door ajar I had to resort to using a computer fan.

Hey! I’m really excited to try this, however I can’t seem to find the Cure #1 process, involving the pink salt? Ha am I totally just missing it? But could you explain what the Cure process is? And is it done before or after the marinade? Thanks!

It’s actually very simple. I add Cure #1 into the marinade, at 1 tsp (5 grams) per 5 lbs of raw meat. When adding Cure #1 you also need to adjust overall salt amount. 5 grams of Cure #1 is pretty much 5 grams of salt.

Awesome! That makes it easy, just combining it with the marinade. However I’m still a little confused with what Cure #1 is. On the first Marinade instructions, if says to follow the directions on the packet. So do I purchase a packet of Cure #1 somewhere or is there a recipe for it? You said it’s pretty much salt, so can I get away with just using salt, or are there some other ingredients I should use? Thanks Again!

Curing salt, or Cure #1, contains sodium nitrite, which helps prevent harmful bacteria growth. Pure sodium nitrite can be deadly in high enough amounts, that’s why it’s never sold in pure form to the public. Cure #1 is regular salt and only 6.25% sodium nitrite.

Typically you would use 5 grams or 1 level teaspoon of Cure #1 per 5 pounds of meat. I only say to go by instructions because Morton sells a different product called Tender Quick, which serves a similar purpose but the ratios used are different.

Hi Victor, What an amazing tutorial on making beef jerky. Not many people go to the trouble you did to lay out all the different steps. I am so impressed and can’t wait to try your recipe soon. Thanks so much for this! I’m giving it 5 stars because I bet it will be delicious 🙂

Thank you for the kind words. I found that the majority of recipes and instructions online take shortcuts and miss the safety aspect entirely, which troubled me. My intent was to create an easy process for making jerky in the conventional oven that produces a great and safe to eat product. I hope you like the results too. My family can’t have enough of our homemade jerky, they love it.